[ SECRET POST #6075 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6075 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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02.
[Fallen London]



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03.
[Krazy Kat]



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04.
[The Lost Tomb]



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05.



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06.



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07.



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08.



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09.
[Transcript: I swear the hell, none of you people think writing is "real" art that takes "real" effort, not compared to the other kinds.]


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10.
[Transcript: I bought a red immersion blender just so I could name it Tom Servo.]






















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #868.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It has a very low barrier to entry and, unlike with art, people can't tell mediocre or good writing apart at a glance. Not saying I'm happy about it, but that's just how it is.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, the thing is that what one person finds to be "good writing" might be boring drivel to someone else. It's a very subjective thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Um, I think most people can tell. I think some people can just overlook it and have a good time with the fic anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

At a glance? If it's like a mass of text, sure, but usually you have to engage with a work before you figure that out.

[(Anonymous)]

Ohhh haha - my bad, totally missed that!

[(Anonymous)]

I mostly agree with you, except that bad writing is harder to put into words why it's bad. You need to understand things about the technical side of writing to describe it. Which is very different to 'his head's too big for his body' or 'woah human spines don't bend like that'.

I'm a classic case in point. I understand writing is an art form, I write myself. My writing is bad but I lack the knowledge to improve it. I cannot formulate the introspection required to make it better.

[(Anonymous)]

Once you start getting into critique, though, you can sort of interpret what people who don't know as much about writing are reacting to. "It was just a misunderstanding/why don't they just TALK to each other" means the conflict was poorly developed or insufficient. "The ending was stupid" usually means the ending didn't sufficiently address the themes of the story or characters, or the themes it was addressing weren't hammered home hard enough in the rest of the work. "The dialogue was weird, people don't talk like that" is, I think, usually more about the writer needing to spend more time really getting to know their characters and develop their voices than it is about word choices and sentence structure - it's about the characters not feeling Real.

No one starts out being able to put it into words, but we all have gut reactions to fiction - the whole job of a writer is to draw out those gut reactions! My writing has improved SO much from reading other work and being thoughtful about my own feelings on it. There's always a really tough climb between understanding what good fiction looks like and why things work to actually being able to do it yourself, though. Which sucks, because you spend a long time being great at critiquing yourself and terrible at actually making good stuff, haha.